**5. Conclusions**

Ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin is an essential national strategy in China. The spatial pattern of the Yellow River Basin is evolving from a dominant space of production to one with a coordinated pattern of development of production–living–ecological space. In this study, we simulated the pattern of PLES in the Yellow River Basin from 2010 to 2025. Based on the scientific understanding of the spatial pattern of the Yellow River Basin, we adopted the landscape ecology method to identify the spatial conflict of PLES in the Yellow River Basin and quantitatively analyze the severity of spatial conflict of PLES and its spatio-temporal pattern; thus, the following conclusions were obtained:

(1) As revealed by the spatio-temporal pattern of PLES in the Yellow River Basin in the past 15 years (2010–2025), the distribution of PLES in the Yellow River Basin had obvious spatially divergent characteristics. EPS has the highest percentage of area among all PLES types and is concentrated in most areas in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, showing an inverted U-shaped changing trend in 2010–2025, while the total area remains stable in terms of fluctuation. PES is distributed in the Ningmeng Irrigation Area, Fenwei Plain, part of the Loess Plateau, and most of the lower reaches of the Yellow River, presenting a U-shaped trend from 2010 to 2025, with the total area remaining stable in terms of fluctuation. Due to the urbanization and industrialization of the Yellow River Basin, the LPS area increases yearly, mainly seen around the metropolitan areas of provincial capitals and secondary cities in nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin. In contrast, due to the industrial construction and ecological restoration projects, the ES area, which can be found in the upper and middle parts of the Yellow River Basin, indicates a decreasing trend year by year. In terms of PLES type conversion relationship, the conversion between EPS and PES is the most frequent, and the conversion area accounts for the highest percentage.

(2) During 2010–2025, the spatial conflict of PLES in the Yellow River Basin is mainly reflected in the encroachment of LPS on other PLES, seen mostly in the areas from Hekou Town to the left bank of Longmen, Fen River, Shizuishan to the southern bank of Hekou Town, and Daxia and Tao River. In addition, from the spatial conflict of the PLES area, the conflict between PES and EPS accounts for the largest area, which is concentrated in certain regions of the Loess Plateau and the region above Jing River Zhangjiashan. In terms of the degree of spatial conflict of PLES, from 2010 to 2025, the average *SCCI* of the Yellow River Basin lies within 0.7, meaning a basically controllable degree. From the development trend of spatial conflict of PLES, 15 of the 29 study regions have major decreasing trends of *SCCI*, 8 regions are in a state of fluctuation, and 6 regions show gradually increasing trends, accounting for 51%, 28%, and 21%, respectively.

(3) From the analysis of the attribution of spatial conflict of PLES, it was revealed that natural ecological conditions are the important foundation of PLES patterns, while human activities are the driving force guiding the evolution of PLES patterns, which accelerates the process of change in spatial patterns. In recent years, the implementation of major ecological protection actions in the Yellow River Basin, especially the large-scale project of returning farmland to forest and grass, the construction of nature reserve systems, and major ecological restoration projects, have played important roles in alleviating the spatial conflict of PLES. Thus, the area and severity of spatial conflict of PLES have been decreasing year by year. However, overexploitation of resources (including agricultural irrigation areas and energy bases) and disorderly construction due to urbanization remain the main causes of spatial conflict of PLES in the basin. Thus, a scientific, efficient, and reasonable pattern of land space development and utilization is key to optimizing PLES in the Yellow River Basin.

(4) This research applied the CA–Markov model and landscape ecology method to evaluate and analyze the evolution of spatial conflict of PLES and accurately identified the spatio-temporal pattern of spatial conflict of PLES in the Yellow River Basin. The study provides important theoretical references and decision-making principles for later analysis of PLES formation mechanisms and internal evolution mechanisms; research on the driving mechanism, formulation of measures and countermeasures to optimize the spatial development and protection pattern of the land; targeting natural resource management, spatial planning and use control of the land; and promoting ecological and environmental protection and high-quality economic and social development in the basin.

(5) This research emphasizes the relationship revealed in the human–land coupled system in the basin, which affects the layout of PLES. Based on the important role of water resources carrying capacity for ecological protection and high-quality socio-economic development, a new perspective for basin PLES research was proposed, taking into account tertiary water resource divisions as the basic study unit. It is also worth noting that the *SCCI* of the basic study unit is a standardized relative value, so the different study scales will have a direct impact on the study results. At the same time, the differences in PLES classification and the use of different simulation model parameters can lead to some bias in the study results. This research analyzed the spatio-temporal pattern of PLES conflicts in the Yellow River Basin only from the perspective of spatial morphology. Spatial suitability was not considered; thus, it is impossible to dissect the main influencing factors of the conflicts. In addition, due to the limitation of space, in this paper, we did not discuss the optimal adjustment strategy to deal with the spatial conflict in PLES. These research directions and contents remain to be discussed in depth by subsequent scholars.

**Author Contributions:** F.X. and J.S. contributed to all aspects of this work. R.W., J.Z. and Y.Y. conducted data analysis and cartographic expression. F.X. and J.S. wrote the main manuscript text. N.W. and Z.W. gave some useful suggestions for this work. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41907402).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**

